Chapter 43 · A Chance Encounter (2)

I couldn’t tell who was more startled the moment the door opened—me or the person in front of me. What entered my eyes was the face of a small boy with shaggy black hair that looked like it hadn’t been trimmed in a long while.

Just as I was about to scream, the books piled up beneath me came crashing down, and I tumbled onto the bare floor as well.

“Oww…”

Glancing at the books scattered around with me, I saw some familiar titles. ‘The History of Santran Magic,’ ‘Ancient Biology,’ ‘Mana Dynamics and Laws’…

‘What… Is he an academy student?’

I got up. He looked far too shabby to be an academy student. He wasn’t even wearing a uniform, and there was no way the academy, which valued dignity as if it were life itself, would let a student walk around looking like that.

‘Then is he a servant working at the academy? A child that young?’

He looked about ten or eleven. As I stared at him, puzzled, he was still frozen stiff, as if his startled heart hadn’t calmed yet.

‘Goodness, he looks malnourished too. How old is he?’

“Um…”

The moment I opened my mouth, the boy lunged at me at the speed of light and clamped his hand over my mouth.

“Mmph! Mmph mmph!”

I struggled in surprise.

“What do you think you’re doing!”

“Shut up.”

The cold, low voice sent a chill down my spine. What tremendous pressure for a child. I felt a sudden sense of danger and struggled to escape him—kicking, pinching, causing a fuss—but this brat was surprisingly strong for his size.

“Mmpph…! Wet go!”

Between the black strands of hair, I could see the boy’s eyes. I was startled again. They were dark blue-green iolite eyes, appearing blue at times and violet at others. I had never seen eyes like that before, but they seemed wonderfully mysterious and beautiful.

But what good were pretty eyes? He had no intention of letting me go and kept anxiously glancing behind him, so I finally decided to use mana.

‘He must have something to hide.’

But something was strange. I couldn’t use mana. As if some wall outside my body was blocking it, I couldn’t send my mana out.

“?”

This had never happened before. There had been times I chose not to use mana, but never a time it was blocked. And it certainly wasn’t because my mana was depleted.

‘Is this a space where mana use is blocked?’

Then the boy whispered in a small voice.

“Speak in a very small voice. Otherwise I’ll cover your mouth again.”

His cheeky attitude irritated me a little, but I still wasn’t skilled enough with offensive divine power to have any way of beating him. I carefully nodded.

“Where is this pwace? Who awe you?”

The moment he removed his hand, I asked.

“So you must be royalty of Santra.”

He spoke, ignoring my question. Gasp! How did he know I was royalty? No one but the nobles should have seen my face.

“H-how did you…”

“Because you have the same hair color and eye color as the king. And those colors aren’t common.”

“Have you seen His Majesty the King?”

“I have. About four years ago.”

Four years ago…? That would have been around the time the war was ending. What business would a child like this have had seeing the king then?

“I’ve seen you a few times too.”

His gaze turned toward the wall. There was a wide horizontal window there.

“It was too far to see well, but your hair color stands out too much.”

I hurried over to the window. Looking down, I could tell this place was very high up. I had never been this high before, so my legs trembled as I looked around at the scenery—and something about it was familiar.

“…This is the royal palace, isn’t it?”

So I hadn’t left the palace after all. But then where was this? Was there such a high place in the palace? In that instant, a thought flashed through my mind.

“You mean the tower on the west side of the royal palace? The one with the twelve divine beasts guarding Lord Lux carved into it…”

“I heard from my father that prisoners of war are confined there.”

“Maybe the royal family manages them because they’re especially dangerous? I don’t know the details either.”

‘That tower!’

I turned to look at the boy. He didn’t look like an especially dangerous person. And four years ago… Wait, four years ago?

“Have you been locked up here since four years ago?!”

He smiled faintly. It was a somewhat self-mocking smile.

“Why? Why…”

“Seeing as they haven’t spread word about it, they must know it’s an inhumane act.”

I couldn’t understand. A child like this, for four years? In a place this old and filthy? Without proper clothes, seemingly without any care at all! And this was clearly a solitary cell.

“I am Basileo Ardeo Pereus, the First Prince of Kalisa.”

The boy said in a low voice.

“I was dragged here as a hostage.”

“!”

It was shocking. Never in all my past lives had I heard that a prince had been taken from Kalisa.

“A prince? You’re a prince?”

When I murmured blankly, he frowned slightly.

“When royalty introduces themselves, shouldn’t you respond with proper courtesy?”

Well, you really don’t look like royalty… No, I shouldn’t judge people by appearances. I looked like a wreck when I was at my adoptive parents’ house too, didn’t I? And he’s been imprisoned for four years!

Besides, looking closely, there was a certain royal dignity about him. A straight nose bridge, thick, sharp eyebrows, deep-set eyes… His features were distinct for a child. But his eyes and manner made him seem terribly arrogant.

“I am… Anastasia Lumière Entimos, the First Princess of Santra.”

I hesitated over whether to use formal speech, but decided against it. He wasn’t using it either, after all!

“You’re the First Princess?”

He looked puzzled.

“Princess Beatrice, who was the First Princess, passed away, so the rank should have passed to the Second Princess. And that princess is… not as young as you.”

“I’m Princess Beatrice’s daughter.”

“That princess never married. She couldn’t have had a daughter.”

Haa… This is maddening. Do I have to explain this myself? Why is he interrogating me like this? I’d be baffled too, but still.

When I stayed silent, he stared at me intently, then soon growled low.

“…Are you a bastard?”

“…”

“So Santra recognizes bastards as princesses.”

His voice was full of contempt. I felt my energy drain away, and I bowed my head and muttered.

“…If you don’t want to talk to a bastard, you don’t have to.”

“It’s not because you’re a bastard.”

“…?”

“It’s because I’m disillusioned with your country’s hypocrisy. You act as if you value laws and doctrine above all, then change them to suit your taste.”

…Listening to him, he sounds like a little old man too. Are you a regressor as well, by any chance?

“Then… it’s not that I’m disgusting to you?”

“Why would you be disgusting? It’s not as if you chose to be born a bastard.”

What a reasonable response! It was such an obvious thing to say, but I’d never heard it before, so it felt strange. No, why are my eyes stinging?

“…Are you all right?”

He asked, seemingly puzzled by me bowing my head in silence. I hurriedly pulled myself together. This wasn’t the time! Everyone must be in an uproar because I’d disappeared like that.

“I need to go back. I used a portal spell wrong and ended up here.”

“You used portal magic?”

He asked incredulously.

“That’s impossible. A tiny child like you?”

What did you just say?! The touching moment is ruined!

“I’ll have you know I’m going to be an upperclassman at the academy soon! Though mana won’t work here for some reason.”

“Of course it doesn’t. This is a space where mana use is blocked.”

“Why?”

“If you’re keeping something dangerous in the palace, you should at least do that much. What if I used magic to escape?”

“But you… I mean, Your Highness, I saw you had magic books.”

Would they block mana but bring magic books? And he wouldn’t have packed them himself when being dragged here as a hostage.

But his face hardened. This… didn’t bode well.

“That is…”

He hesitated for a long while and couldn’t continue. Watching his troubled profile, I kept having strange thoughts despite the serious situation.

‘If someone just tidied his hair and fed him properly, he’d look much better.’

Perhaps because I had spent so long looking at the artwork that was Paeon, my aesthetic sense had grown keen. Seeing a rough gem that looked half-polished bothered me.

Then the boy looked straight at me and spoke.

“Mana isn’t perfectly blocked here.”

“What? No way. I can’t use it at all!”

“That is what your arrogance is.”

Wh-what did you say? The one who looks more arrogant than anyone talking about arrogance. Unbelievable.

“Are Santra’s mages that incompetent? That they can’t even properly block mana?”

“You know nothing about Kalisa.”

He nudged a book at his feet with his toe. The cover read ‘Everything About Mana—Melpisto Demerc.’

“You’ve revered that trash as the pinnacle for a long time, and never even thought to research anything else.”

“Th-that was written by the most renowned mage in Santra’s history!”

“But that person also said there are only a hundred and seventeen kinds of mana, didn’t he?”

That had been an unchanging fact for over two hundred years. Santra’s mages, after long research, had identified every kind of mana a human could accept. And they had discovered that the more powerful one’s mana was, the more kinds one could accept. For example, I had sensitivity to ninety-eight of the hundred and seventeen kinds of mana.

“There is a hundred and eighteenth kind of mana. And only a special few in Kalisa can attune to it.”

“…So that means this place blocks the hundred and seventeen kinds, and you… I mean, Your Highness, can use magic with the unblocked mana?”

“Yes. That’s how I could use portal magic to steal these books. It was incredibly dangerous, and once I make the trip, I have to spend months gathering mana again.”

“Y-you can use portal magic?”

I gaped, forgetting that I had been cursing him in my head.

“It was the one magic I had perfectly mastered before coming here. My father said I absolutely had to learn it.”

He walked toward me with slow, heavy steps. A chill ran down my spine, and I shrank back.

“If I just let you go from here… you’d tell the royal family everything and make sure I could never leave this place.”

Before I knew it, my back was against the window.

“But if I drop you out this window… you’ll simply have died in an accident while using portal magic.”

“E-excuse me…?”

Ignoring my trembling voice, he reached out his hand. And the moment his hand touched my shoulder—

“Ugh!”

A fierce pain struck my head and I sank down. It was a kind of pain I had felt before. Four years ago, when I had accidentally gone near this tower.

And the scenes that had flashed through my mind… People running in all directions, screams, collapsing buildings and outdoor ornaments, and, and… black hair…

“What’s wrong?!”

He hastily withdrew his hand, startled, and asked.

I remembered. How I had died in my ninth life.

‘This boy killed me!’